This invention relates to storage and work shelf devices for out-of-the-way storage of items, and is more particularly concerned with shelf arrangements that permit overhead storage, e.g., in a garage of other structure, which can be raised overhead when not in use and can be lowered for use, i.e., by pulling the shelf down to a lowered, working position.
Shelves are often and commonly used for storing items, such as clothing, towels, gardening equipment, tools, cleaning compounds, or other items. However, in order to be useful the shelf has to be low enough to allow access to frequently used items, but high enough to allow the space beneath the shelf to be utilized. In living areas shelves are commonly installed in the top of a closet or above counters, workbenches or desks. In other areas, such as garages and basements, shelves are placed higher on walls, or hung from ceilings to allow better use of the space underneath them. This space is often required for workshop tools, lawn mowers, snow blowers, or other equipment, or simply to allow room to open the garage door. Garage shelves must generally be mounted high enough to allow room to walk underneath, thus requiring a stepladder or step stool for access to items stored on the shelf. Because of the inconvenience of the higher shelf, only less frequently used items are stored there. More frequently used items tend to be placed in floor level cabinets or simply left on the floor, thus taking up the very floor space that the overhead shelf was intended to save.
A number of disappearing cabinets and shelves have been proposed in the art. For example, LaVee U.S. Pat. No. 4,669,773 is directed to a storage pod for overhead storage in the roof of a vehicle, and employs lazy tong linkages and counterbalance coil springs. Quackenbrush U.S. Pat. No. 3,829,912 relates to a bed assembly that retracts into an overhead space. Huffman U.S. Pat. No. 5,261,645 concerns a remotely controlled lifting shelf for supporting a video projection machine, and has a motorized cable system to draw the support shelf and video projector up into a recess in the ceiling. McCoy U.S. Pat. No. 5,475,949 is concerned with a closet that is supported overhead in an enclosure that fits into the ceiling joists, in which the closet can be pulled down for use, and retracts by spring action into the enclosure in the ceiling. Thorp U.S. Pat. No. 6,250,728 relates to a similar hanging closet arrangement, but one in which a torsion spring provides the power to wind a cable onto a pulley and pull the closet up into the overhead housing. None of these prior arrangements would be suitable for a storage shelf for a garage or basement, for example, in which the shelf could be simply pulled down to a lowered position for use and could be released to be raised to an overhead storage position.